Called No Shame, it was written over four years, as Allen dealt with the depression stemming from her divorce from Sam Cooper and a terrifying intrusion from a stalker, who broke into her flat while she was sleeping, pulled off her duvet and threatened her.

It is a heartbreakingly lonely record. "I'm at my worst when I'm alone /Can't take the peace," she sings, numbed, on the R&B ballad Everything To Feel Something. "Nothing really moves me any more."

"I was definitely isolated," she says of the last four years.

"When me and Sam got together, I very much attached myself to his life. His friends became my friends; his family became my family. So when that stopped, I felt at loss.

"My friends outside of the relationship were, like, my 'showbiz friends' and I didn't want to be in the spotlight at that point.

"Then when the stalker thing happened, I just shut down emotionally in every way. I didn't feel like I could talk to anyone about what I was going through. I just kind of sat at home being sad."

Never one to self-censor, Allen poured all of the heartache into her music.

On What You Waiting For, she takes responsibility for her part in the marriage breaking down. "Don't know why I was untrue," she sings. "I ran at the first sign of trouble."

Apples finds her reminiscing about the early days of their relationship, until the reality of divorce punctures the daydream.

"I'm just like my mummy and my daddy," sighs the singer, whose parents Keith Allen and Alison Owen separated when she was four.

"I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

"It was devastating," she recalls. "Ethel, my eldest, was four when me and Sam broke up. It really felt like history was repeating itself and everything I'd worked so hard to [avoid], ended up happening."